and has developed lighting products such as Tecton,originally realised in 2001. There have been manyupdates since, including the more recent, pared-downcontinuous-row LED lighting system.

The unit is exploring commercial opportunities with
Zumtobel on a new product range, and has designed
bespoke lighting solutions for projects such as the St
Botolph Building (lighting design by Speirs and Major)
in the City of London. Here, a simple and elegant
lighting boom was developed to integrate within a
central glass and steel atrium lift lobby and bridges.
Meanwhile, on the vast London Crossrail project –
adding to his roster of rail projects, including Waterloo
International – Grimshaw, in collaboration with
Atkins and GIA Equation, has designed, developed
and prototyped new lighting systems for the tunnelled
environments across the central stations.

He says he finds the process of designing a light fitting
fascinating, but he acknowledges its complexity.
‘You’ve really got to understand the electronics to
make it work. Other considerations are the economics
and the longevity of the product – typically, the more
money spent, the longer the light lasts.’
Grimshaw acknowledges that he would like to work
on more buildings where daylight plays a major role,
but presumably there are few genres left he hasn’t
done already? ‘I used to say it would be nice to
design a concert hall, but we’ve done that now with
our Experimental Media and Performing Arts Centre
[EMPAC, in Troy, New York State], which incidentally,
has some subtle internal lighting in the auditorium.’
But when pushed, Grimshaw admits that given his
passion for sailing, he would like to design a maritime
museum. ‘It could be an elaboration of what we started
at the Cutty Sark where we illuminated the hull,
which is absolutely beautiful when viewed from
underneath. We could do some lighting on the ships,
and the smaller boats could have their hulls lit up.

Now that would be nice.’

Left: Grimshaw is part of the multi-disciplinary C100
consortium for London’s massive Crossrail mass transit
project preparing 10 component packages, including
lighting, for all 37 new stations to be completed in 2019

Overleaf: Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center
(EMPAC) in Troy, New York State, with ‘some subtle internal
lighting in the auditorium’